De Caso elected president of Mexico trade group Anipac

MEXICO CITY — Francisco de Caso Peláez, a partner in Mexican flexible packaging company Minigrip de México SA de CV, is the new president of national plastics industry association Anipac.

He beat recycling company executive Carlos Alberto Saldate Paton, the only other candidate in the election April 8, by an estimated 70 votes to 50, Martha Griselda Alva de la Selva, Anipac’s managing director, told Plastics News.

Both De Caso and Saldate had promised to improve Anipac and the plastics industry’s image and its relations with the news media.

De Caso wrote of his intention to support efforts to help the Mexican plastics industry “recover markets that have been lost to imports” and to “formulate and execute” an exports promotion program for plastics products.

Saldate , managing director of Bio Reciclados Folgueiras SAPI de CV, was equally enthusiastic and proposed professionalizing Anipac’s staff and signing agreements with technological and academic institutions to increase the number and quality of training programs.

De Caso succeeds José A. del Cueto Gracia, an industrial engineer and company director, who was elected president of Anipac in 2012.

Eduardo de la Tijera Coeto, a former Anipac president who is accepted by many as an association oracle, described the turnout by members eligible to vote as “perhaps the largest” of all the elections held in recent years. A new president and his team are elected every two years.

“After the result was announced, I perceived an atmosphere that was very different to that of other elections in which one ticket was victorious and the other was left deflated and despondent,” he wrote in his regular newsletter, emailed to subscribers.

“It wasn’t like that yesterday. I felt there was a general desire to work together, putting any divisions aside and working as one, regardless of the score or the result.”

Anipac, which has 232 member companies, stands for Asociación Nacional de Industrias del Plástico AC. Its offices are in central Mexico City.